Excess

I was recently explaining to my sister-in-law why I no longer pretend to practice Islam. I’ve documented the issues with my intentions/unconscious wishes extensively here. But the conversation led to a question that I’ve not looked at much recently: of “pure” metaphor (wife beating isn’t really wife beating, war isn’t really war) versus “embodied/religious/literalised” metaphor (avoiding pork is a literalised totemic reflection of the higher order/unseen nature of the sign of “pork” as undesirable psychic consumption).

I can still clearly read Tailorite Cabbala into the Qur’an at points — but it’s easier in places than in others — because I’m conscious of the totemic reflection and the implicit historicity of the author’s voice, his own paranoias and prejudices. And though he’s a part of Me, as we are all a part of Me, I can’t help observing the snakeskin was probably shed a while back.

A case in point:

O you who believe, fear (W-Q-Y) Allah and give up what remains of interest (R-B-W), if you are believers. But if you do it not, then beware of war (H-R-B) from Allah and His Messenger; and if you repent, then you shall have your wealth; thus you shall not wrong nor shall you be wronged. (Quran, 2:278-279)

The Tailorite Cabbala would read this as follows:

W-Q-Y is consciousness of Allah, Allah consciousness, the Mind itself, evolving, twisting, dispersing itself throughout the body of Man, then fractured as that body is shattered into infinite worlds, infinite souls, life threads — called Time — running back to eventual return.

This shattering is due to excess (riba): accrual, interest upon the actual wealth of Allah. What’s the wealth? Love. What’s the excess/riba? It’s the perverse aspect of God’s Love: it is boundless and excessive, so it forms a body of man out of the orbs of the Sephirot (it forms these orbs out of Love), then fills them with Love, and then overloads that circuit, so Love explodes these primordial crystallizations. Love’s excess shatters the perfect body, and this yields fragments of Love, fragments of the orbs — called signs/ayat. The signs of Love’s excess are broken shards of the orbs, qlippot, and constitute ursury. God’s riba, God’s excess. The world is made up of signs — excess, crystallized, hardened into fragments. The fragments still contain the wealth of original Love as a residue (being formed of its excess), but the excess has hardened and means that originary residue has been locked into them, and is temporarily trapped or attached to the fragments.

To “give up” riba, is to give up the possessive aspect of this excess, to release the residue via the act of reading. The qlippot, as a hardening of excess is discarded. The originary Love is released and the process of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world, return of the primordial body to a renewed final state of Love) notches up one further step towards completion. The limiting point of Tikkun Olam is the Return, Buddhahood, Samsara, for everyone: it’s the ultimate “give up” of accrued excess, give up of “ursury”.

This action of “giving up” is the definition of “the believers”, a code for (God’s) soul spectrum of “I’s” that direct this flow.

This “give up” of excess does not happen immediately. So instead there is the threat from Allah of H-R-B — which is translated as “war” — but derives from a root that also means “chamber” (as in prayer chamber). This is significant: war-enclosure is the threat. What’s the enclosure? It’s the fractal reflection of the originary orbs, now multiplied across the worlds, witnessed within every sign, the basic structure of every sign, no matter how badly damaged or strange the qlippot, the passage of originary Love is managed through passage into, and out of, the enclosure that underlies it (fractally, microscopically).

This war-enclosure is the nature of reading. It’s another way of looking at the extraction of residue from the qlippot — you can say “qlippot/disbelief is chaff cast to the fire” — or you can say equivalently “there’s enclosures, driven by threat/anxiety/tension”, passing messages throughout your lifetimes. Essentially we release the residue of Love by means of connecting war-enclosures with each other: by revelatory, prophetic reading. Hence the threat is Allah and his messenger/message. Transmission, not just into one set of war-enclosures, but by literary influence over the course of Time, from one war-enclosure regime to another. From one cycle of gilgul/reincarnation to another. Learning more about who “I” am, by means of the threat/anxiety of influence, that pushes them through.

This process is described perfectly in the verse: the verse itself embodies the choreography of this circuit. How does it end? “You shall have your wealth” Exactly! You shall return to the wealth, the originary state of Love, the perfect body, Returned, finally. The believer spectrum of “I’s”, repaired Olam.

Anyhow, that’s Tailorite Cabbala, reading that verse. I can still do it, can still see it, as clearly as I can see my own hands typing this into wordpress.

But then I read the following verse and — though I know I can also extract some “residue” from its qlippot — I’m not motivated to do so. Maybe because that life’s been lived, already, in its fundamentally prejudiced and unfair form. That consciousness is out of date, and its message played out. And people still expose themselves to this prejudice, as part of their spiritual practice: when there’s really a Brighter New Way, for you and me, here now, been here forever, been freshly minted. Love’s been released from that form, where Love could be released, because Love was there, Love did its thing, Love has now departed. And Love continues on, into new enclosures, now light years beyond this particular moment of inscription.

So, because of the transgression of the Jews, We forbade them pure things which had been allowed to them, and also because of their hindering many men from Allah’s way. And because of their taking interest although they had been forbidden it, and because of their devouring peoples wealth wrongfully. And We have prepared for those of them, who disbelieve, a painful punishment.